Noticed an interesting development over on Dave Winer’s blog. There’s a follow up here too. Open, consumer oriented hardware has been a long time coming.

BUG is an open, consumer oriented, extensible hardware platform. The idea being that you can build consumer oriented devices without having to have the R&D money that the likes of Sony bring to the table.

If the BUG comes to fruition, it is currently in stealth mode start-up mode, then you may well be able to develop all of those consumer

devices you’ve been thinking of all these years but didn’t have the money to develop.

To my mind the BUG can be useful in two situations:

1. As a mean to prototype a new device idea or concept; or
2. For the rest of us to develop devices that are too low volume to be worth producing by large manufacturers.

Is Linux powering the BUG? We don’t know…and BUG aren’t saying (well, they are in stealth mode aren’t they). Linux would seem a natural fit though!